


Don't go away mad (Just go away)

by marieincolour



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-23
Updated: 2012-07-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 21:16:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marieincolour/pseuds/marieincolour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There's a lot to be said for childhood grief that was never processed properly, that leaves a young boy screaming at his even younger brother to never, ever, ever speak of Mom. Ever."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't go away mad (Just go away)

**Title:** Don't go away mad (Just go away)  
 **Author:** marieincolour  
 **Rating:** G  
 **Genre:** Uhm. Can be read as gen, can be read as wincest (Sam/Dean) with those glasses on.  
 **Word count:** Ca. 5200  
 **Warnings:** Uh.  Light spoilers for both early and later seasons.  
 **Disclaimer:** I don't own Supernatural or any of the characters. Title stolen from Mötley Crue.  
 **Summary:** "There's a lot to be said for childhood grief that was never processed properly, that leaves a young boy screaming at his even younger brother to never, ever, ever speak of Mom. Ever."  
 **A/N:** It's always tempting to write long notes. Especially this time, because this took a lot from me, somehow. Writing about grief is _never_ easy, and it always feels personal. There's a lot of hurt here, but there's some cozy comfort at the end to make up for some of it. :)

 

** Don't go away mad (Just go away) **

There's a lot to be said for childhood grief that was never processed properly, that leaves a young boy screaming at his even younger brother to never, ever, ever speak of Mom. _Ever._  
Dean knows that, because when parents die kids are taken out of class and given counseling. He's seen it happen. Professional help, patience from teachers and students for however long it takes the kid to get their shit together and keep going. To escape the horrible vacuum that is grief and loss, that sends families, _good families_ , tailspinning out of control until they manage to crawl their way back on track and work around the still fresh gaping hole.

He remembers it better than he should, having been four years old and mostly all about his toy cars, because to them that grief stricken, airless bubble around them never popped. There was no catharsis, just endless awe of the woman that had once been his Mommy, Sam's mother, and had once been John Winchester's wife.  
They left so soon after that Dean remembers it as immediately. Sammy babbling in his car seat, and a terrible ache of fear deep in the pit of his stomach that leaves him squirming in _his_ car seat.

Daddy's not right.

Daddy doesn't smell of oil and grease and car, and there's no soft Mommy to hide behind when his big hands are too much and the rough housing gets too scary for a four year old just a little small for his age. There's something intense about him that isn't all about bringing up children that are safe in their own skin and comfortable with their place in the world. Like he's going through the motions, but only when sharply reminded by a cry from Sam or two boys sleeping through the night in second hand car seats, shivering slightly in the cold air in a car with a broken heater.

Dean's memories of the Impala from the first few years aren't the happy memories that later on created his love for the car. Mostly, it's uncertainty. He remembers feeling uncertain and scared and not a little lost. There is no home anymore. There is no teddy, or story time, and there's no sandwich without a crust. Suddenly he gets to carry Sammy all by himself and use the big knives to spread peanut butter on his bread, and bedtime is less about a bath and clean PJ's and more about crawling under stiff sheets with his baby brother sleeping in a portable crib on the motel floor while Daddy stays awake. John doesn't take to drinking, but Dean remembers the unpredictability in their lives as the same kind of twist in his gut from fear as he does the times John comes home from a bar, throwing things around and shouting with spittle flying from his mouth, staring around with wild and angry eyes before sinking into a chair and crying into his hands.

 

 

It's not until he's an adult, well into his twenties and John already dead, that he realizes that while he always thought his dad did the best he could, he really didn't. Not out of lack of love or because he wanted anything less than the best for his kids, but Dean thinks he lost track. That instead of snapping out of the desperation and sense of unreality that surrounds the first days after losing a loved one and with it an entire life (he really does think they were meant to grow old together), John drove on. Pushed on. Never snapped out.

And Dean isn't surprised that his survival instincts are what they are, or that he never learned to deal with his emotions.

It's not even funny, really, the way he runs himself ragged. There's a scary kind of energy about him, frenetic and _quick_ in everything he does that just keeps going, keeps doing more, taking on more work or finding something to do like he's afraid that if he does nothing he'll leave nothing behind. Or that if he does nothing he'll have nothing to look forward to.  
There's a stressed kind of mood over Sam as well, responding to the fact that what's basically his life partner at this point is running himself into the ground in a crazy effort to be his father's best son. Sam's fingers are tight around the wheel of the Impala, recently healed and on the road again, and his face is pinched and pale, reflecting the way Dean's face looks. He thinks. He doesn't feel any need to check it out in the tiny makeup-mirror behind the sun-blind, knows that he'll find the same weariness on his face that Sam's wearing all over his own.

The interstate is lit up, wet asphalt reflecting blueish white lights as they whizz past in a hypnotic pattern, making long, white lines in his vision long after they've been passed by. Sam's face lights up and fades out with a beat just out of tune with the music thumping out of the radio, muted enough that he can only hear the bass. It reverberates in his skull, bouncing from temple to temple with a reassuring regularity.

Sam turns to look at him, his brows pulled close together in a question. He lets his shoulders twitch, then wince at the effort when it sends streams of burning pain from his skull to his toes and lets his head fall against the t-shirt wedged between him and the passenger side window.

 

Dean didn't have a Mom. Sam didn't have a Mom, either, but Sam never had a Mom that he could remember, and Dean can't grieve for the both of them. Besides, there was someone _there_ for him to remember his lunch and make sure he had clean clothes, in a way that filled the physical requirement for a Mom in their tiny motel rooms and dingy apartments. He used to think that when Sammy said _"You're not my Mom_ , he'd had to have thought of it somehow.

Sometimes, when Dean went home with a friend after school, or even just watched someone get picked up, or was handed their lunch that had been forgotten in the kitchen before school, his heart would ache so powerfully he'd have to turn away and tell himself he didn't _need_ a mom.  
He didn't want to be one of those kids that had _Motherless_ written all over him, but knew that the stamp was there no matter how much he tried to wash it away, written in invisible letters recognized by mothers everywhere in the way he moved and talked, what he wore, what he'd have for lunch and how he did in school.  
He couldn't stand the thought of needing anything, of lacking anything when they should be doing fine. Didn't want pity or for people to feel with him or extend condolences like the time he took Sam to his parent-teacher conference because John didn't care and Sammy wouldn't stop nagging him. He didn't ever want to speak of it again, because he wants it all to be over as soon as he can so he can stop being Dean; the boy who tries too hard at being good to compensate for everything his family lacks.

No one will ever love him like his Mom did. Not even his Dad, because his Dad had a choice between his sons and revenge, and he chose revenge. Revenge isn't a person, but it's as good as one in the Winchester family life.  
 _No one_ can love him like his Mom did. Look at him and see a flawless, perfect child that's everything she wants in her life, and who can't imagine the world without him.  
It's not really that he's being maudlin, either, because it's just a fact. No one loves you like your mother does.

_“You're allowed to be angry”_ a councilor once tells him. _“It's all right to be angry, Dean. It's unfair that you're growing up without a mother.”_

At the time Dean didn't understand what he was meant to feel was unfair, but he thinks he does later on, after years and years of trying to be everything his Dad needed turns out to be too little anyway and his best efforts get him nothing but a life of spoiled opportunities because he always did his best and never noticed that the turnoffs were passing in his rearview mirror. And maybe his inability to understand what he had to be angry over was just another symptom of how little he had really understood.

 

When John finally passes, after about 20 years of close calls, Dean finds the old state of mind like it never left. Like he hadn't made a single inch of progress in the years passed since Mary's death. He slips into his old role of good boy so fast it nearly gives him whiplash, and it takes him a long, long time to notice that it's more effort to prove he's fine than to actually be fine.

Which is how he finds himself with his head leaning on a t-shirt that's been serving as a grease-rag for years bumping against the rubber lining of the window and swallowing down bile as the lights of the road burn into his retina in a way that suggests his eyes are directly linked to the eviction notice-button newly installed in his stomach. His fingers twitch, like his body wants to fix something, but doesn't know what.

If you'd asked Dean when he was eight, he would have told you that if he'd had to choose, losing his father would have been worse than losing his mother. He would have said it in a tone of voice that suggested that to him the scenario was perfectly normal, and he would probably have followed up with how he planned on getting Sammy away to raise him alone if John made the mistake of dying, too. There would have been nothing in his tone suggesting which of the parents he loved the most, or which one he preferred. It was a practical matter. Dad saved everyone. What could outdo that? And his tone would have been so perfectly at ease with it, like that was just how the world worked, that it would have broken your heart.

After John has passed and Dean's head is splitting open and Sammy is throwing him concerned looks across the black bench of their shared home, one hand on the gear shift and the other on the wheel, he isn't so sure he can't blame his father for the lack of lunches with smiley faces in mayo, or entire wardrobes from goodwill. And really, those are just physical manifestations of what he's known for years.

When Mary passed, nothing was ever good enough for John. His kids were loved because _kids were loved._ Not because they were Dean or Sammy, not with hopes for a fruitful life or with their own personalities, but with a desperation bordering on a reckless obsession with their safety, and an assumption that his revenge was _their_ revenge.

Dean is pretty sure that some fathers react to their wives being murdered with being _fathers_. Rather than refitting his car with a weapon's arsenal and his kids with guns and dragging them all over the continental US to hunt down everything evil. Not even the thing that killed Mary, just.. Anything unnatural. Some fathers, and Dean _knows_ they're out there, adjust to everyday life of packed lunches, laundry and soccer practices and make the best they can of it.

And fuck if he doesn't wish that John was one of those.

The admission, even to himself, sends him vomiting. The little bit of dinner he managed comes up with coke and bile all over his lap before he can signal for Sam to pull over. He whimpers with the strain, because every movement of his neck sends him gagging and his eyes tearing up and every nerve ending in his body is on _fire._

Sam doesn't say a word as he pulls away his coat from Dean. It's been spread over him, back to his chest for the last twenty miles or so. He folds it into a plastic bag, ties a tight knot and stuffs it in the trunk.  
“You all right?”

Dean doesn't manage to avoid wincing at the sound, and when the Impala rumbles to life again he can feel tears working their way out of the sides of his eyes.

Sam, bless him, gets a room at the first motel he can find that doesn't look like it's mainly inhabited by roaches and rats. The beds are hard and too high up from the ground, but the bathrooms are recently done up with brown and dark grey tiles, flashy and expensive and _clean_ , and after trying to empty himself of vital organs into the toilet his younger brother keeps an arm around his shoulders as they walk to the bed, Dean's eyes mostly closed against the spots in the ceiling that are creating a whole new pattern of lights on the back of his eyelids.

“On your stomach” his brother says, in that deep voice that's still going deeper, soft and kind and the one thing Dean has done right by. _Dean_ did right, even while Sam didn't. There used to be resentment there, he thinks to himself as he twists his head to his side.  
“Think you can hold down some coffee?” that same voice asks, and he can't hear any resentment in it now, and can't feel any inside himself. Only worry and warmth. He shakes his head at the coffee. There's a bit of quiet before the lights dim and someone is pulling the covers up over his bare legs, and then placing what seems to be a plastic bag with ice wrapped in a towel over his neck. He hisses in pain before the tight muscles of his neck finally relax under a warm, firm touch across his back.  
“It's okay” Sam says again, quietly and in a voice that suggests there's nothing wrong, even while Dean knows nothing is _right_ , and will never be right again.  
“It's okay. I've gotcha. I've got some industrial strength painkillers in my bag. Think you can keep those down?”  
He doesn't nod, but Sam seems to take that as yes, and he supposes that's all right, because he'd be vomiting down the side of the bed if it was a no.

_He did something right by Sam_. Sam always handled not having a Mom like it was a sad thing, rather than denying the sadness of it with every fibre of his being. Dean used to be embarrassed at the honest answers his brother would give (“My mommy died when I was a baby. I miss her.”), but looking back on it as an adult, he sees the health in that. Dean wouldn't have confessed to any such thing. “We're doing all right” he'd tell you. “Dad's got it covered.”, copying his father's maniacal energy like he copied everything else.

Sam handles their father's death like any normal person would. He's angry and frustrated, but mostly he's just sad. It's getting better now, three months on and with a steady knowledge based on several years of experience telling him that it's possible to live without John Winchester dictating your moves or goals.

The painkillers kick in even while Sam is rubbing circles on his t-shirt clad back, not saying a word even though they both know this migraine is pure stress and anxiety, bad diets and grief and everything bad saved up until there's enough shit between his ears to blow his brains out his nostrils. He might be able to sleep now, having paid for a night's sleep in a full day's agonizing pain.

Sam's hand is still steady on his back when he finally drops off. It's there for another twenty minutes, still and warm against the soft fabric of the t-shirt, slightly heated skin warming through the thin cotton.

He emerges from the migraine almost three days later, eyes still sensitive to the light and his head filled with concrete, but all in all on the mend. His body feels heavier and lighter than it was before, like someone rearranged it and put the weights in different pockets to shift the load. He knows one little migraine doesn't take away the fact that he's not even thirty, and the only family member he's got left is his brother. Or that every single one who disappeared that he knew and loved died and left their own sets of grief and pain that he has to muddle through without them.  
He's not even certain he's equipped to handle any of it, to be honest, and he feels like it's written all over him.  
“Here's Dean Winchester. He never learned how to handle life.”

The Impala these days is memories of so many hours on the road he can almost taste the cold cheeseburgers and the flat soda, Doritos crunching under his butt as he shifts despite knowing that there's nothing there now. Ghost Doritos, maybe. He knows every corner of the car, every fold of black leather and every turn of the engine. Everything in this car has been fiddled with and repaired, cleaned or otherwise touched by his hands. He's not sure, but if someone had counted the hours he's spent building this car into a manifestation of everything good in his life as opposed to the hours spent in the backseat with a cranky baby brother and a father with a broken heart up front, scared shitless and confused, he kind of thinks he's outdone the sadness with work.

He leans his still too-heavy head back again, wedged between the windows and the top of the seat in a position his body has come to accept as restful – albeit grudgingly. His hands still have that slight tremor in them, and his twenty minute stint behind the wheel an hour ago has left his eyes feeling strained and warm, his forehead thumping quietly in pain along with the pulse in his ears, his neck. He knows Sam is still watching him carefully, keeping an eye on him as he dozes with his head slung to the side and his hands limp in his lap, but the fact alone doesn't make him feel self conscious. He just feels tired. A little bit tired, that's all.

He opens his eyes to see a row of bland, oatmeal coloured doors in front of him. The car is standing still, though he doesn't know how long it's been like that, and the air inside it is warm and heavy. The leaky window next to him lets in cold air, he can feel the draft against the bare skin of his neck, and he shivers. Pulls his brother's second favourite coat close to himself and let himself wonder vaguely where he went off to. If they're staying or not, or if Sam is just taking a piss before they go on.

He knows, of course, that there'll be a jingle of keys as Sam approaches the car in just under two minutes, the copy of the paperwork he just filled out hanging from his other fist as he tries to smile and not look worried. Dean knows that, because he can feel the fever thrumming through him, his limbs rubbery and painful in that deep-set kind of way, his skin overly sensitive to the roughness of his filthy jeans, his feet swollen and warm and achy in the slightly damp boots he's wearing. He settles for watching out of the window, waiting for Sam, even while it strikes him that he doesn't even know which direction he'll come from.

In the two minutes it takes Sam to approach the car from the driver's side, Dean drifts off again, warm and sweaty, shivering and uncomfortable against the slippery leather of the seats.

“This isn't a migraine” is all Sam says as Dean flops down onto the comforter of the first available bed. There's an ache, set in his neck and between his shoulders like a vice. He shrugs, wants the feeling to go away, the one that's making his ears throb all the way down to his knees.

The new room is as good as the old one. Newly done up. He wonders vaguely how long they've got until they need new credit cards, but the thought escapes him before he can grab proper hold of it. He was relieved of financial duty after he and Sam spent a week sleeping in their car last March, waiting for the new cards to drop down, courtesy of Bobby. It was cold, wet, and completely unnecessary. Sam's running the show now. He hasn't dropped the ball yet, whereas Dean would let the things he needed to get done built up to such a level that he couldn't do any of them anymore. It was easy to ignore that they wouldn't have any money next week when they weren't there yet, in his head, and that was the thinking that relieved him of that particular strain.

“It's not healthy to bottle things up”, his teacher once told him, when he'd knocked the crap out of a boy named Billy, his locker and his backpack. He was around eleven, he thinks. He scoffed at her, because he didn't know that that was exactly what he was doing. Dean knows everything going on inside his head. How could he not? And as a kid, it never occurred to him that the adults around him, the ones who had any semblance of what their lives consisted of and actually wanted him to deal with it in a constructive way (Pastor Jim. Bobby. Dad. Sometimes.) couldn't possibly know that. And that while Dean thought about all the things in his head, and knew they were there and thriving, no one around him would know unless he talked about it. And really, that was just too uncomfortable.

“Time to hit the clinic, man” Sam says suddenly, his voice calm and firm even as he puts one hand on the back of Dean's neck to feel his entire body convulse in dry, painful coughs. Really, this is the first time he's coughed in a while, but it's burning in his chest, down his left arm and up his temples. Dean thinks Sam might be right. It might be time to hit a clinic.

“Walking pneumonia” Sam repeats right after the doctors says it the first time. Dean sits patiently, eyes half closed agains an ache in his back and exhaustion in the rest of him as Sam discusses antibiotics and cough syrup and all sorts of shit.  
“I didn't think walking pneumonia normally called for antibiotics” He hears his brother say, and can almost see the sarcastic eye roll the older man gives him before looking over at Dean.  
“Would you rather I left him to 'walk it off'?”  
He goes back to typing on his computer, Dean watches as Sam quietly pockets a prescription pad while the guy is looking the other way.  
“Two weeks course of antibiotics. Twice a day, two at a time. Come back if they're not having an effect in a few days. Cough syrup with codeine. Should put him to sleep.”  
His voice is still sarcastic as he takes in Dean's slumped posture, almost asleep already.

He wonders if the doctor would have preferred his maniacal energy from a few weeks back, when Sam was scared of him and worried for him and Bobby had all but given up on speaking to him.

“This is a rescue inhaler. You know what that does? Good. And make him do this one twice a day.”

The man's talking directly to Sam now, like his patient is two years old and doesn't speak yet. Sam's hand is firm and warm on his shoulder.

“Bed rest. Until the fever disappears, and then another day.”

“Uh. I thought walking pneumonia was the less severe kind?”

The doctor looks into Dean's eyes when he mumbles the words out, sweat dribbling down his back onto the waistband of his jeans. He coughs wetly, holds a fist to his mouth and nearly groans. Rubs his chest. He gets a look that tells him he's further behind in their conversation than he thought. The doctor decides to help him out.

“It is, normally. Because normally people come to me when only a small area of their lung is inflamed. You, my friend, are about six weeks late for that.”

Six weeks late isn't as bad as some of the things he's late for. Really, he's nearly a decade late for graduating high school. Over a decade late for getting a real drivers license in his own name. Six weeks is like a sneeze in the bigger picture.

He pretends to be asleep in the car, eyes hot and wet against his eyelids as he stares at the upholstery of the car. At a spot Sam's been picking at. Or maybe it was him, he doesn't know. It might have been a part he picked up when he repaired the Impala, he doesn't remember. Can't find it in him to care at all if this is an original part of his childhood or from someone else's. Sam pulls into a parking space in front of the 24 hour pharmacy, lopes in on legs longer than some full grown trees Dean has seen. Obscenely long legs. He's back sooner than Dean would've thought, looking stressed and hurried as he waits for the automatic doors to open at a slower pace than he's keeping.  
“Got us some stuff” he says, throwing two bags of drinks, snacks and medicine into the backseat before settling himself behind the wheel again.

Dean can't remember the last time he didn't want to hand his keys over to Sam and let him do the work.

The motel room is quiet. Blissfully quiet, but the hum in his head keeps going long after they've gone in. Louder, somehow, in the quiet. He feels like he's still moving, his brain going a mile a minute while very fibre of his soul is screaming for it to shut the fuck up and go to sleep and stop acting like a demented snooze button, twitching him awake when he finally manages to close his eyes.

Sam is folded into a chair over by the table, legs on the second chair and laptop in his lap. His hoodie is loose around his waist, creating a pouch that kinda makes him look like a kangaroo. Dean looks away, to the TV with no sound. Looks away, to the windows with dingy curtains. Coughs, groans. Twists onto his stomach, back on his side. Huffs.

His eyes burn, suddenly, with repressed anger and frustration because he's sick, running a fever, he's short on sleep, and everything fucking hurts like someone gripped his chest and squeezed it into a body that's far too small, and filled his lungs up with cement at the same time. His fist bangs itself into the headboard, seemingly all on it's own because Dean can't remember telling it to do that, and just as he tries to bury his face in the damp pillow underneath him there are arms. Warm, soft hands and long arms, and he's pulled close with a fevered face against a chest clad in thick, warm cotton that doesn't feel horrible against his hyper sensitive skin.  
“Uncomfortable” he mumbles, suddenly all too aware that he's wearing jeans and they're chafing and rubbing against his thighs, and the warm hands disappear for a moment to pull them down without unbuckling the belt two notches in from where it normally is. His legs are chilled under the lukewarm covers, twined around a pair of legs in sweatpants. His head is back on the warm chest, one hand stroking the hair on the back of his head quietly. The TV isn't muted anymore, suddenly. There's volume. Low. Soothing.

There's no catharsis. There's no violent crying or honest talks, and there's no way Dean wants to tell Sam that he's unable to get over anything, ever. That everything in his head stays fresh and painful like the day it happened, like the second of realization never leaves him, but somehow that afternoon sparks something good anyway. A whole, long, warm afternoon under stiff motel covers, coughing up mucus and groaning with chest pain, putting all his weight onto the chest of a little brother who feels like he's twice the size of Dean and much, much cleverer and wiser, and he finds that all in all, he doesn't have to be perfect, and that he left “impressive” behind the first time he vomited down his own chest just a few days ago.  
Time doesn't heal squat as far as Dean's concerned. Not parents who didn't care enough or a brother who took your heart and left with it. All it does is throw a paper thin tarp over it, that flies up with every breath of wind to expose you to the elements. And it fucking sucks. _It sucks._

He'll never admit it, but when he snuggles his nose into Sam's hoodie, and all Sam does in response is rub a big hand against his back without calling him a girl even a little, there's a bit of letting go in that moment right there.

A week later, when they hit the road again, he's almost excited. It's not much, because by normal standards he should be deliriously happy to be behind the wheel after almost a month of trying to get away from it, but his hands still tremble slightly after even the smallest exertion, and his eyes are still straining to keep up with the spinning of the planet. Sam watches every move he makes, searching for signs or fatigue or pain or anything that suggests Dean isn't entirely happy with driving or talking or even breathing, and he'll take it.

Years from now, after heaven and hell, angels and demons and betrayal so deep it goes straight through, that's all that's still standing. The car and his brother. And if you ask him now, twenty years after a boy figured out how to take his brother and run, or which of his parents he'd rather lose, a man with shortly cropped hair and the kindest eyes you'll ever see might tell you that everything is _shit_ , thank-you-very-much for asking. He'll say it with a voice that suggests he's ordering pie or asking for directions, and you might think to yourself that there's something more to what he's saying, and then shake it off and go about your day.

We've all got our stories to tell, after all.

-fin- 


End file.
